Fixed Price vs. Store Inventory Format

#1

With the upcoming changes to Ebay's store listings, I wanted to see what kind of historical differences there were between the current store inventory format and fixed price formats. I have many duplicate listings between store and fixed.

The question is simply - how valuable has "core" search been?

Of course, since everything will be in core after April, how effective it will be in the future is still a big question mark.

Looking at December stats for my duplicate items (my biggest dataset):

Traffic - same item received between 3x - 10x more hits as fixed than in store.

Sales - only 4 matching store items had any sales at all in store, while the fixed version sold a total of 114 sold items.

So for the dups, it seems clear that a LOT more people found the same item as fixed (in core), than in my store.

Overall Sales stats (dec):

Fixed Price (core) - about 100 listings created 450 sales
Store - about 400 listings created 110 sales

Average sale price was double for fixed - and accounted for 83% of all my sales for December.

Overall Traffic stats:

Fixed price (100 items) - about 1,200 page views
Store (400 items) - about 200 page views

--------------------------------

So if we do some quick averages we have:

Fixed price items were seen an average of 120 times each, versus .5 times each in stores.

Fixed prices listings sold an average of 4.5 items each, versus .275 sales each in stores.

Cost per sale:

Store inventory cost (subscription + listing) = $27.95 for 110 sales for a cost/sale of $.25

Fixed price cost = $35.00 for 450 sales for a cost/sale of $.08

----------------------------------

These stats were actually quite startling.

They are skewed by the fact that my most popular items are chosen for core - but the duplicates did so much better in fixed I have to think I've been missing out on some sales.

So even if core's value decreases due to a flood of new items after April, there's still a good chance that overall performance should improve.

(moderators - please don't move this into the news thread...which has degenerated into some kind of personal nonesense. Thanks.)

#2

Thank you Stock Miser...these are the kind of stats I was hoping for....as you pointed out....it will be hard to say how valouable core listings will be in the future when there are no more store listings but what you have shown us is the value of core listings in the past....

#3

Its hard to predict but I think it will improve sales overall. In the collectables, ebay tends to have played a shell game of hiding ones store items - intentional or not that was the result 75% time, imo.

I'm not sure how the fixed price will appear in the ranking page number but if it shows up with search that has to be better as opposed to not showing up at all. If the search query is very specific then it should show up well... if more broad search request it may be buried in the back of 5000 pages since it is fixed 30 day item. But- most i think are aware of searh processes and try to be specific in item details. I hope ebay gives a Bump to each fixed price rankings at some points of its 30 day period.

Yes the other thread is getting hot tempered. You have to understand why. Some were using store only options and if so the fees are much higher. I use both so the mix balances the fees out. I still have to say the 99c auction freebees are a scam as far as including them in the price comparor link Ebay is displaying. And like others said why no freebees for store owners (10c for 99c auctions)? And will they stop free listings of alt screennames with links to stores of the sellers' other screennames?

#4

The only "fly-in-the-ointment" here is that store inventory has been in "core" in the past, only to have eBay drop it a month or two later.

History has a way of repeating itself on eBay.

#5

Quote: › Yes the other thread is getting hot tempered. You have to understand why

That's easy to understand. One particular person keeps posting and basically using the thread as a propaganda site for the site he sells on.

Quote: › And like others said why no freebees for store owners (10c for 99c auctions)?

Perhaps for the same reason that non-store owners have to pay 50¢ for 30 day fixed priced listings while store owners will pay a max of 20¢.

Quote: › And will they stop free listings of alt screennames with links to stores of the sellers' other screennames?

eBay shouldn't allow free listings to link to stores period. If they find links, the ID should be charged the regular auction rate, for the first offense and suspensions for those that don't learn their lesson.

It figures that no sooner does eBay offer the new price structure, than some sellers try and figure ways around the rules.

#6

DaLizardsLair wrote (View Post): ›
The only "fly-in-the-ointment" here is that store inventory has been in "core" in the past, only to have eBay drop it a month or two later.

History has a way of repeating itself on eBay.

This is true but there are notable differences. Last time store inventories were included in the core search there was a difference between a fixed price listing and a store fixed price listing. eBay realized that sellers werent bothering to list in the more expensive fixed priced formats because they could get the same exposure for the lower priced store format. This time they are calling it all "fixed priced"

It seems that eBay is relying more on store "subscription" fees upfront rather than insertion fees upfront. Their reasoning is sound. For the sellers who do not leave, there is an incentive to list more items and the upfront costs risks are lower since they will pay for the subscription they choose whether they list 1 item or 10,000 items. For a premium store with 1000 items, there is a savings of about 300 dollars per month in insertion fees. If you list 5,000 items you have saved $1,500.00 in exchange for paying an extra 35 dollars for your store.

As it has been said, these changes will benefit the bigger sellers but hurt the smaller sellers.

#7

The smaller sellers will simply close their stores and go with the free auction listings.

#8

Ebay link policy is very clear and written out for all to see.

You may post as many as you want links to any ebay items within your listings.

Links from an eBay Store
You can include these types of links on your Store home or custom pages:

Unlimited links to your eBay items and pages

Links to an email address that members can use to ask questions

Up to 10 links to eBay Store pages of other members (with their permission) on your Store home page and unlimited links on other Store custom pages

Links to pages off eBay that provide information about your store or service, as long as you're not promoting non-eBay items

Links to your Add to My Favorite Sellers and Store s page

#9

>>As it has been said, these changes will benefit the bigger sellers but hurt the smaller sellers.

I think you'd have to qualify "small" as meaning casual. Someone who sells so few items - but still uses fixed price - that they cannot justify even a basic store. For those sellers, fees are going from .35 to .50 for each listing.

The other group would be those sellers with a large inventory of very slow movers. These guys have a lot of listings, but so few sales that they cannot justify an extra subscription cost to keep their listings cheap. These are also - imho - casual sellers.

I consider myself to be a small seller. Most bronze and silver PS's make a modest living from ebay. We pay hundreds of dollars a month in fees right now. Almost any way you look at the fee change, it's cost effective. If it boosts our sales for a very modest price increase, then its a good deal - for small sellers.

One big plus that I haven't noticed anyone mentioning is no more double listings. A lot of store owners with multi-quantities will have the same items in store and in fixed. A lot of store owners will post some items in fixed, and leave the rest of the variety in stores. After 3/30, it's just one thing - fixed.

For those people that use the BIN tab, there should be a noticeable DECREASE in listings - perhaps 30% or more - once you take out the dups and slow movers. When you think about it, there's nothing in the new fee structure that would encourage any store owners to list more total inventory than they do now.

**#10**

Quote: › Last time store inventories were included in the core search there was a difference between a fixed price listing and a store fixed price listing

And there will still be a difference between the two...in price.

Store owners will pay a max of 20¢, while non-store owners will pay 50¢.

How long do you think eBay will put up with the complaints from those who don't want to be tied to a store, before they simply take stores out of search once again?

Remember, eBay has had this love/hate relationship with stores. They can never decide whether they want to put their emphasis on fixed priced items or auctions. One month they go one way, the next they go the other.

**#11**

Quote: › One big plus that I haven't noticed anyone mentioning is no more double listings

Except it doesn't account for those stores that listed items in auctions, as well as their store.

And when talking about Media items, that's not that uncommon.

List one or more copies of a CD in auction and have more in the store for those who don't like bidding.

**#12**

Jerryb wrote (View Post): ›
Its hard to predict but I think it will improve sales overall. In the collectables, ebay tends to have played a shell game of hiding ones store items - intentional or not that was the result 75% time, imo.

I'm not sure how the fixed price will appear in the ranking page number but if it shows up with search that has to be better as opposed to not showing up at all.

Very logical, but it's not necessarily so. The reason is the again very reasonable assumption that a core listing for Seller A, at a given page ranking, would provide the same page views as would an identical listing for Seller B at the same page ranking. That is not the actual situation however, even if both sellers were identical in every respect, and the listings were identical, and both listings occupy the same space on the search result pages. One might have 120 views per listing as Stockmiser reports, the other might have 10, and those results could be consistent throughout both sellers' listings.

That's an observation, not speculation. The only conclusion to be drawn is that there are other factors involved in how many page views a seller will have, factors which are beyond the seller's control and of which he is unaware.

Although Stockmiser presented a reasonable and well-considered series of posts I have to disagree with him about one point. There have been and still are sellers who make a modest living from slow-moving items in primarily store listings. These aren't necessarily casual sellers - they simply have adopted a different business model, using different techniques, perhaps born of necessity. Someone in Stockmiser's situation (healthy core page views) would likely see those techniques as redundant and pointless, if he recognized them at all. That's saying nothing against Stockmiser of course, because he's in a totally different situation.

The upshot - in my opinion - is that this particular mode of selling will be put under stress if not eliminated entirely (for non-diamond seller types). Why would eBay do this ... well for one, those who stubbornly adapt and continue will be paying more for those slow-moving items. For another, listing counts and GMV in core will continue to rise which looks good for Wall Street. And finally, eBay search will have more control over what sells and doesn't sell, and for whom.

**#13**

Hey WP!

As usual, I agree with you Cool

I think it's worth considering what ebay's goal here is. Yes, they want to make more $$ - but that's always the end game. The question we should be asking is how ebay intends to do it. Just jacking up rates and driving off sellers is counter-productive.

I think they have every intention of purging the site of "slow movers". I think they believe that slow movers clog up the works - create too much stale inventory. I think they want to be more like Target, and less like K-Mart - get that old inventory out of the system. Surely not good for those with this kind of merchandise - and I think this purging is 100% by-design.

In the longterm, the only way ebay makes more money is by generating more sales. To have more sales you need to have more buyers. Where there are buyers, there will be sellers. So right now it's all about buyer experience. Make is safer. Make it more fun (99 cent auctions). Make it more relevant. Have better deals. Show more buyers more items they want to buy.

So the buyer that's looking for a knob to a 1947 cadillac is a lot less valuable than 20,000 buyers looking for ipod cables. It could take a year for that knob buyer and that knob seller to find each other. The 20,000 cables sell in 24 hours.

When you look at ebay, what do you see? Do you see a flea market? Do you see an art fair? Do you see a small antique shop? Well, I think ebay sees a mega best-buy-target-costco-super-mart packed with buyers - with a few small street vendors hanging around to keep that carnival-like atmosphere everyone likes Cool

You either fit in with this vision, or you don't.

If the buyers ebay is trying to attract are not your kind of buyer, then ebay probably doesn't have much need for you, and their fees and policies will reflect that.

I'm one of those little street vendors. The bigger the crowd, the more I sell. Definitely not everyone's business model.

**#14**

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**#15**

I dpont know- I think price will become the major factor here-- I have plopped a few into core - experementing and using as bait. no bites and no action to store. yet. sales sloew Core is going to become the great equilizer- I fear having to really cut proces to move MDSE.

Stockmiser wrote (View Post): ›
With the upcoming changes to Ebay's store listings, I wanted to see what kind of historical differences there were between the current store inventory format and fixed price formats. I have many duplicate listings between store and fixed.

The question is simply - how valuable has "core" search been?

Of course, since everything will be in core after April, how effective it will be in the future is still a big question mark.

Looking at December stats for my duplicate items (my biggest dataset):

Traffic - same item received between 3x - 10x more hits as fixed than in store.

Sales - only 4 matching store items had any sales at all in store, while the fixed version sold a total of 114 sold items.

So for the dups, it seems clear that a LOT more people found the same item as fixed (in core), than in my store.

Overall Sales stats (dec):

Fixed Price (core) - about 100 listings created 450 sales
Store - about 400 listings created 110 sales

Average sale price was double for fixed - and accounted for 83% of all my sales for December.

Overall Traffic stats:

Fixed price (100 items) - about 1,200 page views
Store (400 items) - about 200 page views

--------------------------------

So if we do some quick averages we have:

Fixed price items were seen an average of 120 times each, versus .5 times each in stores.

Fixed prices listings sold an average of 4.5 items each, versus .275 sales each in stores.

Cost per sale:

Store inventory cost (subscription + listing) = $27.95 for 110 sales for a cost/sale of $.25

Fixed price cost = $35.00 for 450 sales for a cost/sale of $.08

----------------------------------

These stats were actually quite startling.

They are skewed by the fact that my most popular items are chosen for core - but the duplicates did so much better in fixed I have to think I've been missing out on some sales.

So even if core's value decreases due to a flood of new items after April, there's still a good chance that overall performance should improve.

(moderators - please don't move this into the news thread...which has degenerated into some kind of personal nonesense. Thanks.)